Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Although the steroid scandal tends to overshadow his Oriole career, Rafael Palmeiro was signed in 1994 with Miguel Tejada-like hype and largely lived up to it during his Oriole career, at least the first stint. Less than 25% of his homers came during "garbage time" and less than 47% of his homers came with nobody on base. (The major league average is about 58%...) More than half his total home runs wither put the O's ahead or tied the game and there were 4 walk-offs. His BHI puts him on-par with the Oriole immortals.

BHI - 469

Rick Dempsey - 65 Oriole Career Homers

I almost hated to do this to the namesake of my blog. Even though Dempsey had a lot of big hits in the postseason, I didn't think he would acquit himself well in this survey of regular season home runs.

But he fares OK for a guy with only 65 career homers for Baltimore. Although he hit a ton of solo shots, very few came during "garbage time" (less than 25%) and nearly half of his homers were game tying or go ahead shots. The lack of walk-off homers renders him fairly average.

BHI - 136

B.J. Surhoff - 120 Oriole Career HomersShockingly, B.J. Surhoff is now the reigning Oriole king of the Garbage Homer.

Why? Just over 62% of his homers were solo shots and only 32% of his homers either tied the game and put Baltimore ahead. But the killer was that more than a third of all his homers came during "garbage time", mostly when the Orioles were either up or down by 4 runs or more.

I didn't even know this was possible but Surhoff gets a BHI that is negative.